Bad Dreams
by HowWonderfulLifeIs
Summary: Jack tells the story of the night his world fell apart.


NO, I do not own Newsies!

"I'll kill ya! Ya gotta come back ta Momma, I'll kill ya if ya don't come back ta her! She's dyin', she's gonna die without ya! She needs ta see ya again, I don't care if ya hit me or nothin', just don't let her die on me! Dad, if she dies, I'll never fergive ya!"

My dreams always begin like that, when I'm screaming at him, his face as cold and hard as it always had been, but to be ignored was even worse than his typical blows. That was the day I hit rock bottom, the horrible day I promised my old Dad I'd kill him. Even now I can't hear his name without wanting to punch somebody's lights out; I've knocked drinks out of my gal's hand for bringing him up, but she's never fazed by that sort of thing, God love her. I've gotten better at controlling those urges, but really, I usually just go out and find the Delancys and give em' trouble. That's why I always start trouble like that, to get these things out of my system. Girls cry in their rooms, and I start street fights, that's what my Ellie says. She always says that sort of thing when I'm feeling kind of down. She feels like she's gotta make me smile, like she has to laugh it off to make me feel a little better, and I've told her a thousand times that it's just hopeless. But she keeps trying. That's just the kind of doll she is, the kind of doll who really cares about what happens to you, come what may.

Like I said, that's how all my dreams begin, because my dreams are just unpleasant bits of the past. If I could, I'd dream of Santa Fe, but it's like Francis Sullivan is doing the dreaming instead of Jack Kelly. It starts out on a really dark night, only one street lamp nearby, but the stuff I see there is so nasty that it isn't worth the light; there's an abandoned bar with a broken window, there's a girl a little younger than I was at the time begging on a corner for pennies and singing under her breath, and there's a scream, a woman's scream, echoing from a window above me. That's just the kind of world I grew up in until I was about ten. People were unhappy, poor, downtrodden, and most of 'em had lost their faith in God a long time ago, but not me. No, I stubbornly refused to let that world, or my louse of a father, get me down. I was a little King of New York. So anyway, I sprint down that ugly street every night in these dreams, and then I find my lousy Dad standing outside that bar, the last bit of an old cigarette hanging over his lip, burning just like I wanted him to. You'd think he'd be doing something of purpose, seeing as he'd just left his loving wife and punching-bag son, but he's just staring. Just staring off into the distance, lost in thoughts that I could only imagine would further ruin my mother's health and sanity. Seeing as I'm ten years old again, I'm scared as all get-out, but of course my anger is much stronger than how afraid I am of this man. He doesn't even look down as I get close, and that burns me up even worse than before. I want to yell, "I'm here! I'm here, and Momma's here, and you're all we've got in life!" Because as cold, as violent, as sadistic as that man was, he really was all Momma and I had. He just couldn't walk out on us, not like that. Not when Momma needed him.

"Dad?" I began, trying to sound as confident as he did. "Dad, where ya goin'? Momma's back there, and she… Dad, she's gettin' sick, she's sittin' in that corner again! Ya been gone for days, I know youse goin' somewhere-"

His hand flew out, just like it always did when I, or anybody else, got in his way, and connected painfully to my cheek. His blows at the best of times stung for a couple of minutes, but this was a dizzying back hand that was sure to leave a welt on my cheek; I was seeing red, but at least I'd gotten him to do something! I knew he could hear me, he just had to hear me! But instead of talking back or even shooting me a glance, he began to walk away, slowly, taunting me, every step a step away from Momma. I didn't care if he left me, he'd only ever used me as his way to get things out of his system, but leaving Momma would be a betrayal I could never withstand. So I ran after him. What else would a ten-year-old do? I was angry, betrayed, confused, what else could I do?

"Ya can't just turn yer back on her now, not now! Dad, if ya don't come back… Dad, she's gonna lose it, she'll lose everything she had, she'll lose her mind if yer not there ta get her through this! I'm not enough by myself! She's gonna need more than just me, Dad, I'm just a kid, I can't do it alone! For God's sake, listen to me! Just listen to me, Dad, just fer once, please!"

It burns to watch somebody just walk away from you; it says that they don't care, that they didn't even care enough to say so. Amazing how a person's back can say so much to you, isn't it? So much, actually, that it can send you reeling, even when the person hasn't actually said anything to provoke you in the first place. I'd been angry before, hurt before, but never like that, never abandoned or frightened like that. He just kept going forward, only cared about himself, only ever pulled the people who loved him down with him; he drowned them with his troubles, and that night, I let him pull me down deeper into his lies, just like he always did.

I couldn't help what I did next, but if I hadn't been so young, I might've had more control over my actions. I was seeing so much red, and down on the sidewalk was a busted-up whiskey bottle, and the broken glass looked like I felt; I just got dumped on the ground by some moron who didn't care enough to clean up his mess. Without thinking, I picked up the bottle. I didn't even see the bulls around the corner. I just sped up after my old man, and with a little kid's scream of pain, I gave my Dad's back a nice cut with the sharp edge of the bottle. He roared, and turned around with this killing look in his eye, and the policemen around the corner came to pull me away before he could hit me back, but he should have been the one who was scared.

"I'll kill ya!"

And then I wake up. Usually, when I dream like this, I go into Ellie's room, and she tells me stories from those books the nuns gave her when she was little. Fairy tales and other such bull-crap. For some reason, the bull-crap makes me feel just a bit better, and then, when story time is over, there's time for other things. Nobody can make me feel the way Ellie does, especially when I'm low as I can get; that's when she works her magic, and tells me that the past is another land. But even if she's there, I still have bad dreams, and the past comes back to me in places that I can't control.


End file.
